Cathleen (Cat) McGuire has been active in social justice since the early 80s. She was involved in anti-racist and anti-war activism in New York City, but “hadn’t necessarily thought about feminism” because it “came with the program.” “My mother was a strong woman and I had her spirit in my DNA, and so I never thought of feminism per se,” she explains. Following a year long retreat (what she refers to as a “reboot”) to explore spirituality and self in the early 1990s, she started really looking into feminism and its various strands, quickly segwaying into ecofeminism.
Explains McGuire:
Ecofeminism, the way it’s kind of different from other feminism is that its […] core thesis […] is the domination of women and the domination of nature are fundamentally connected. […] It was a big lightbulb moment for me; a major shift.
McGuire reflects that, without ecofeminism, she would not have been likely to come across nonhuman animal issues. Her brother introduced her to Jeremy Bentham and his rational analysis of speciesism, but when she soon came across Carol Adams’ Sexual Politics of Meat, her ecofeminism shifted considerably. “She really made a huge difference for me,” McGuire explains. Not long after, she became an editor for the Feminists for Animal Rights newsletter. Vegan ecofeminism encouraged “walking the talk,” she reflects, it “just made sense.”
McGuire is perhaps best known for her grassroots organization formed in New York City with her twin sister Colleen, Ecofeminist Visions Emerging (EVE). The group was comprised of a huge diversity of women of all ethnicities, races, class backgrounds, and ages (although men did not attend the regular meetings, they were involved in some university workshops). Topics included animal rights, urban planning, the experiences of Pacific Islander women and nuclear energy, dreams, men, and so much more, all through the “prism of ecofeminism.” EVE was one of the only ecofeminist collectives to seriously integrate issues concerning other animals. Animal issues, McGuire supposes, have been marginalized in ecofeminism because vegan ecofeminism “has more of a walk your talk approach. It’s not as willing to be coopted.”
EVE provided an opportunity for exploration, learning, and analysis within community. Findings from monthly meetings would be coalesced into a newsletter that was distributed by post. EVE also hosted regular reading groups for the work of ecofeminist philosopher Mary Daly, even hosting Daly for a sold out lecture in New York City. In addition, EVE offered monthly social gatherings and protest events including guerilla graffiti actions against sexist advertising in the city and monthly menstruation workshops. With so much activity to organize, EVE eventually came to an end after four years, having more or less run its course (McGuire also notes that the time had finally come for her to prioritize work).
Although EVE’s co-founder Colleen was not included in the interview, Cat was able to offer some insight into her biography. “As identical twins, we’ve always done things together. And um, even when we write we sit there together and just kind of both of us work the keyboard, I kind of give it to her she’d give it to me.” Colleen was more politically active, Cat explains, as she was involved in movements against war, racism, apartheid, and the oppression of Palestine in the 1980s. As a result, Colleen had been developing a “deeper analysis” of feminism, Cat explains, such that when Cat got involved in ecofeminism, she found Colleen easily in alignment: “She was definitely right there with me. It was as new for her as it was for me and we both explored together.”
McGuire has long been critical of liberal feminism given its assimilation into patriarchy. Liberal feminists, she charges, simply replicate toxic masculinity. Charges McGuire: “to me liberal feminism is just using your female card to make it in the male world,” and it is “more conforming than anything else.” She is also critical of radical feminism (including that of Daly) given its binary thinking, lack of attention to gender fluidity, and tendency to dismiss men. However, McGuire today remains uneasy with the considerable tensions between 2nd and 3rd wave feminists with regard to recognizing and including trans folks.
By way of example, she notes how this discord would eventually shut down the long running Michigan Womyn’s Festival. This festival served as a “petri dish” of feminism, she explains, creating opportunities for experiments and debates about what feminism manifest would look like. This included the role of vegetarianism. The Michigan Womyn’s Festival honored a vegetarian policy, but this was not fully accepted (or abided) by all attendees.
McGuire herself would relax her plant-based diet as she grew older. This decision came at her doctor’s suggestion, but she also expresses frustration with the hardline approach that predominates in political veganism:
It’s these splitting of hairs and sort of virtue signaling and how pure are you in your vegetarianism and veganism I don’t think is very constructive. […] it became too much orthodoxy and policing peoples habits […] I didn’t get in it for health reasons, I got in it from a spiritual and ethical perspective, but I ended up moving away from vegetarianism, for me, more for health reasons, and I know that is highly debated that doesn’t have to be true, um, but I just know for myself it made a difference for my health. […] I support veganism for others, it just didn’t work for me. And my sister, to this day, is vegetarian, but I’m just not. I feel like a traitor on some level, but I support other people doing it, it just didn’t work for me.
Moving on from veganism (and vegetarianism) was not easy for McGuire, who had built a life and a philosophy around the practice. “It was very upsetting, it took me a long while,” she reflects. As a result, she began to explore Indigenous philosophies that were more forgiving of flesh consumption as part of ebbing flows of life and death, as well as Tibetan Buddhism which offered her new perspectives on decision-making with regard to reducing harm:
It’s still sort of a quandary for me, because I did believe so much in the importance of it. But also I’ve been very concerned about how the people who try to rule our planet are demanding that people be vegan and they’re creating fake food to support this agenda.
Unlike many vegan feminists active with Feminists for Animal Rights, McGuire has always been wary of framing veganism in an inflexible way. Not only is this problematic for certain human populations she supposes (such as Indigenous persons), but it could find itself aligned with what she sees as a “new fascist order” in the 21st century. This leftist fascism, she worries, seeks to control all aspects of human life, essentially co-opting veganism and, to McGuire’s chagrin, pushing plant-based “fake food.” “The way I would see vegan feminism moving forward is to not allow the cooptation,” she urges.
“I think it’s really important for vegan feminists to not just to walk the talk in a doctrinaire way so that they’re holier than thou,” McGuire offers, encouraging vegan feminists to be aware of the potential for powerful institutions to weaponize their ideology. Without diligence, vegan feminists could find themselves aligned with nefarious entities and oppressive institutions with ulterior motives. “Keep a bigger picture, a broader lens, to see beyond what might your own values be and how that might be used,” she concludes.
Newsletters and other resources produced by Ecofeminist Visions Rising can be found on the group’s substack page. Smith College also holds several boxes of EVE material in its archive. Cat and Colleen McGuire’s writing can also be found in the Feminists for Animal Rights newsletters.
This interview was recorded on March 10, 2025.